Review Article on Ulysses S. Grant

Published on Reviews in History (https://reviews.history.ac.uk) Review article on Ulysses S. Grant Review Number: 2270 Publish date: Thursday, 26 July, 2018 Author: Charles W. Calhoun ISBN: 9780700624843 Date of Publication: 2017 Price: £25.00 Pages: 720pp. Publisher: University Press of Kansas Publisher url: https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2484-3.html Place of Publication: Lawrence, KS Author: Ron Chernow ISBN: 9781594204876 Date of Publication: 2017 Price: £25.00 Pages: 1104pp. Publisher: Penguin Press Publisher url: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/311248/grant-by-ron-chernow/9781594204876/ Place of Publication: London Reviewer: Belle Grenville-Mathers As a scholar of Grant, I have come to view the news of the publication of each new Grant biography with trepidation. As almost every biographer of Grant has explained at the beginning of their magnum opus, Grant was an extremely complex man whose abilities bemused even his closest friends and allies. He is frequently described as an enigma, and it is clear that he remained an enigma for many of his biographers. However, despite this impenetrability, his reputation has greatly risen over the past two decades, and it rises still with the latest efforts on his life. Our understanding of Grant, as both a US Civil War General and President, has come a long way since his denunciation by the Dunning School as a callous butcher of soldiers, and an overzealous, incompetent president who forced African-American civil rights on the South. It has changed again since the revisionist portrayal of his presidency as one that abandoned African-Americans as it became engulfed in scandals and corruption – a portrayal that saw Grant’s administration ranked as one of the most corrupt in United States History. Estimations of Grant’s military capabilities began to rise in the 1950s as historians and popular writers proved that forces under Grant’s command suffered fewer casualties than his Confederate counterparts. But the re-evaluation of his presidency has been much slower, beginning in the 1980s and continuing to this day. Increasingly historians are acknowledging that Grant’s presidency achieved more and deserves greater praise than previously accorded, especially as he was the last president until Lyndon B. Johnson to make serious efforts to enforce African-American civil rights. This progress is due in great part to the publication of Grant’s personal papers by his presidential library (available both in print and online for free), which has led to an explosion of biographies written on both his Civil War career and his presidency. No longer can historians claim, as William B. Hesseltine did in his 1935 biography of Grant’s presidency, that Grant possesses no manuscript collection.(1) Grant’s presidential library has amassed a rich collection of papers for historians to mine, and it is clear that both Charles W. Calhoun and Ron Chernow have benefitted considerably from this resource. Both authors have produced biographies which present an intelligent, astute politician and man who cared and felt deeply for those less fortunate than himself and who did his utmost within constitutional constraints to prevent violence against southern Republicans from white terrorists. They illustrate that Grant was relatively free from the racism of his day, and tried to treat African-Americans justly both personally and as president. He believed it was the Republican Party’s duty to guarantee and protect black civil rights long after his presidency ended. Grant was dedicated to enforcing Reconstruction – more so than many former abolitionists – and his frustration with Congress’s inability to legislate on this matter was palpable. While acknowledging, as many have done before, Grant’s personal honesty, they also show that corruption during Grant’s presidency was not simply malfeasance but a political weapon wielded to undermine Grant’s popularity and his ability to enforce Reconstruction. Though they concede that scandals undermined Grant’s presidency, and diverted both Congress’s time and attention from Reconstruction, they illustrate that this corruption was well-known and existed long before Grant’s administrations. The uncovering of corruption during Grant’s second term reflected a desire by many different parties to undermine Grant’s reputation. Yet Calhoun and Chernow have composed two very different biographies. Calhoun’s 593-page biography focuses exclusively on Grant’s presidency, and his prospects for a third term, and in doing so has filled a gap created by past Grant biographies which have prioritised detailed accounts of Grant’s Civil War career to the detriment of his presidency. Calhoun’s biography is the more scholarly of the two, and thus the more valuable to Grant’s historiography. In contrast, Chernow has followed the traditional biographical route, and written a 959-page analysis of Grant’s life, beginning with his ancestry and early life, and ending with the writing of his memoirs. In doing so, he explores every aspect of Grant’s life, but he is more balanced than previous biographers as he explores Grant’s administrations in greater depth than earlier works have done. His work fits the model of a popular biography, and is a very readable one at that. Chernow’s biography is admirable in many ways, and as a popular biographer he shows how far Grant’s reputation has travelled since the historiography of Grant’s career began. The Grant in Chernow’s biography is intelligent, determined, and dedicated both to the Union and to African-Americans. Chernow highlights how Grant, neither an abolitionist nor a Democrat, disagreed strongly with the institution of slavery and knew the Civil War would lead to its destruction. The book documents Grant’s difficult relationship with his father-in-law, which was partly due to their disagreement over the subject of slavery, and which led the latter to refuse to give his daughter the title to her slaves for fear his son-in-law would emancipate them. Later the book shows how enthusiastically Grant supported Lincoln’s emancipation and enlistment policies for former slaves, and explains how as president Grant became enraged at white southerners’ disregard for the 14th and 15th Amendments, which endowed African-Americans with citizenship and suffrage. Long gone is the indifferent, inept President who failed to protect African-Americans. Where Chernow really excels is in giving the reader a sense of the man behind the career. His biography is rich in colourful stories which flesh out a so-called ‘sphinx’ and show Grant to be a cheeky, fearless figure behind the great acts. Chernow recounts playful conversations between Grant and William Sherman, along with reminiscences from other officers about that ‘twinkle in Grant’s eye that we often saw there when he meant mischief’ (p. 348). There are interesting stories too often left out of the scholarly biographies. In one such episode Grant asks to see a defused mine, which is brought to him aboard his naval headquarters, where it started to hiss leading his men to throw themselves onto the deck and jump overboard. He and Admiral Foote run up a ladder before realising their foolishness, leading Foote to ask ‘General, why this haste?’ to which Grant replies ‘That the navy may not get ahead of us’ (p. 171). These anecdotes bring Grant to life. But however endearing these stories make their subject, the numerous contradictions in Chernow’s work leave their credibility in doubt. In one instance, he writes of how a servant threw out Grant’s false teeth, presumably dentures, during the siege of Vicksburg but on two other occasions, one of which is shortly before Grant’s death, he writes of Grant’s tooth pain resulting in extractions without anaesthesia. Similarly, in an opening chapter Chernow mentions that Grant once commented that he ‘never could eat anything that goes on two legs’ (p. 15), only to later recount an incident at West Point where an officer called at Grant’s room while he was cooking a chicken and commented on the peculiar smell in his room. Unwittingly, what Chernow highlights in these contradictions is the large number of false reminiscences that proliferate about Grant. Nowhere are these false memories clearer than in Chernow’s examination of Grant’s supposed alcoholism. One of the main differences between Chernow’s biography and previous works on Grant is his thorough exploration of this topic; Chernow considers Grant an alcoholic who learnt to control his addiction, indeed he calls it his greatest battle. Yet, there are numerous contradictory stories in his discussion of Grant’s drinking. Various contemporaries claim that once Grant started drinking he could not stop, others suggest that a single drink had a marked effect on him, while yet another acquaintance stated that he used alcohol to calm his nerves. Chernow acknowledges that many recollections of Grant’s drinking have clearly been embellished by their authors, who sometimes were not even present when the supposed incidents occurred, but rather than discount the entire story as fiction, he repeatedly writes that there is ‘a kernel of truth’ in the tale (p. 276). It is a line which he follows even when the stories delineate from his identified pattern of Grant’s drinking – alone, in places where he was unknown, and at moments of insignificance. In one incident, he details drunkenness at a dinner in Calcutta during Grant’s world tour where the author of the tale is absent having left the city the day before. Chernow substantiates this tale by quoting the words of Grant’s brother-in-law, diplomat Michael Cramer, who recalled Grant mentioning that he only drank once on his world tour. Chernow ‘wonders’ (p. 878) if this tale is the occasion, forgetting that three pages earlier he mentioned Grant having ‘a few drops of champagne when the king proposed his health’ at a banquet in Copenhagen (p.

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